State education system, is it broken?

[minimathsmouse]

I believe the wheels have fallen off the state education system. You might not agree but I have read so many posts here from parents who have had and are still having huge problems with their child's school. Many people seem to have worries about standards of teaching, clashes of ideology and problems with making up the deficit with tutors and home study. Horrendous SEN provission, huge class sizes, lack of provision for able pupils, the list goes on. It is truely depressing to think so many children are not receiving the education they deserve.

How many people believe the whole system has failed? Are falling standards only due to poor teaching or wider problems that are not being addressed within the system?

Or The Big Society...

Yes, that was a blatant example of pre-election idiocy. I'm not sure which is more stupid:
a) to waste millions on publishing the unratified curriculum, or
b) to ditch the curriculum (that cost millions of pounds to develop) within a week of coming to power.

As the 'new' Gove curriculum is not expected until Jan 2012, it would surely have been more sensible to use the Rose Curriculum for the next 18-24 months, rather than nothing?

I think in some sense all governments have an ideology which is political and nothing to do with education - the last lot were as guilty of that as the current lot. What worries me is that this current government has ideas which are so destructive and devoid of sense (i.e.not caring about nutritional standards for school meals, axing the funding for sport in state schools) that the education system will never recover. As for free schools and academies - sounds to me like yet more handing over the reins to people who have never been on the shop floor. Their devoutly held belief that things will automaticall run better if they are run for profit scares the pants off me - how long before they introduce this into state education?

Hear, hear pointythings.

The cut in funding for sport is a travesty. The children gain so much from it, in addition to it providing a much-needed link with local secondary schools.

Every time I think of the new curriculum they are conjuring up, my stomach turns. The messages we get are so mixed, ranging from the freedom of a creative curriculum to sitting in rows and reciting kings and queens of England. (Or will different types of school be able to do other things? Or will different GRADES of school be allowed to suit themselves....?) I hope to god someone, somewhere in Whitehall is going to do some joined up thinking.

Meanwhile I await a rush of squaddies from the local barracks, eager to enrol on the GTP scheme. (Anyone see that one today??!!)

Do we know how much of this is for real yet, anyway?

Yes, I think I've heard of the GTP scheme. Isn't it the one where they parachute high achieving graduates into schools to experiment really hard on how to teach for a few years before allowing them to leave for better paid jobs? Or was that another one?

Do you sometimes wonder whether anything in life at the moment is for real? I sometimes think I'm hallucinating.

A whole new curriculum based on political soundbites would certainly make us proud as a country (I don't think). I can just imagine a few luvvies sitting together in a brainstorming session. One suggests that the problem with teaching is that it is too theoretical and teachers are not getting in enough practice from the start - so they come up with the idea of the GTP scheme. Another one suggests that we've moved too far away from the three Rs, so they decide that schools should go back to the 1950s, like in the TV programmes. Then another one suggests that some people might not vote for that, so we should allow some schools to be a bit more arty farty. Then another one suggests that we should separate children out so that the brighter, wealthier and better cared for children shouldn't have to mix with the loutish, snivelling oiks who are likely to be educationally subnormal, so we should allow the wealthier, brighter and more pushy parents to get involved in setting up their own schools. Then they all agree that they just can't fit it all together and trying to go into too much detail on all of that brainstorming would take far too long, so they'll just introduce the whole lot all at once and see how it goes. That'll show us!

Rabbitstew - it was a little more than that (I really rate the GTP course).

This is the quote from my favourite paper... 'Reforms at a Glance':

More student teachers trained in classrooms rather than colleges

More ex-soldiers recruited to teaching, as good role models

pmsl...

Rabitstew, if your last post was a spoof it would be funny. As it is, it's very worrying that they've actually mentioned all those things.

We all worry a little bit about NQTs and student teachers teaching our children though, don't we. Not because they are all bad (in fact many are hugely enthusiastic, lacking in cynicism, have extremely good ideas and might be better than a cynical old teacher who is waiting for retirement), but because they are new to it, so will be learning by their mistakes - on our kids. GTP sounds like even more people who are new to it being allowed to get their hands on our children without all that much more support than an NQT taught under the old methods is getting and with hardly any prior background info. on teaching to warn them off even going into the classroom when they realise they are not actually up to what is expected after all. And if they are getting more support than that, which poor teacher is having to do this? Are their classes suffering as a result? How do the GTPs track the progress of their pupils if they haven't been trained to assess the effectiveness of their bright ideas before they start? Or is someone else doing this for them? Is it just going to be used as an excuse to dump an unqualified teacher in a room with a lot of children and tell them to get on with it? Or to put more onus on schools funding these schemes out of their own budgets rather than direct from central government?

And is this scheme just aimed at secondary school, or does it apply at primary level, too?

I admit I don't know much about it, but it smells a little bit fishy to me (given the current lack of funding). I'm sure it will attract some really good and altruistic people, though, along with all the rest.

We have two GTP-trained teachers at school at the moment, one of whom trained with us. The great advantage of a GTP trained teacher is that they have had hands-on classroom management experience throughout their training. I'm sure all teachers will admit that their biggest headache in their first year was how to deal with the children!! (I had no idea after a wishy washy PGCE in the mid 90s!)

Students are mentored rigorously in school by a teacher who is NOT the teacher of the class they are sharing. They also have to swap with another GTP student to gain experience in a 'different' type of school.

We are training a GTP student at the moment in Y4 and he is swapping with someone in January, who is coming to train with me in Y2. Our KS2 leader is mentor. The training includes loads of reflection and evaluation of classroom practice.

Hey, I know - maybe the Government is actually thinking, "We can't be seen to accept Labour's ideas on education, so we'll publicly drop the plans for their new curriculum, then spread scurrilous rumours around about our alternative plans before quietly introducing what they suggested in the first place, because it would be far too expensive to think up anything else, now, anyway." The guessing games are endless.

The more I read Rabbitstew, the more I agree with almost everything you have said.

I might be more cynical!

So if academies and free schools are likely to offer a different curriculum, different methods of teaching, different ethos and results, what about this governments response to all questions about Grammar schools.

On the radio yesterday one of their kind (can't remember which monkey) stated that Grammars will be supported where they exist but no grammar schools will be allowed in areas where none already exist. Does this not create more educational apartheid by post code?

What do others think?

Hi, stoatsrevenge. It sounds as though you have a good school that is making good use of GTP. I do feel marginally more positive about it on that basis. And I know that my mother always felt with nursing that a move away from the wards in the first few years to putting your nose in a book and learning nothing but theory was actually negative rather than positive - but then "old fashioned" nurses had very different responsibilities to those given to nurses today. She also thoroughly disapproved of the move away from nurses being responsible for hygiene, etc, partly encouraged by the move away from the wards where its importance was rigorously drilled into the new nurses by the Ward Sister. Nowadays, of course, contract cleaners who know little about the rigorous discipline required to keep a hospital clean and who are paid a pittance are largely responsible for one of the most important jobs in the hospital (or have they finally changed this error??? I've lost track). It would be easier to learn from our mistakes if we weren't forced into constant about turns and radical shifts at every change of government, of course, or worse still, told that the changes have been so radical that we can't actually go back to what worked better because it would be too expensive. Which might be why nothing much ends up being changed after all this time around (except the funding)?...

Or will they really sell the family silver to pay off the bankers' debts? Aaarggghhh. I think they are enjoying making us suffer.

I have a good new slogan: "If it 'aint completely broke, then smash it to bits and blame the opposition."

They made me do it, you know. It's all their fault. I had no choice.

Actually, I vote for them sticking with the status quo, because that's what Labour did to us when they got into power - hardly changed anything, so that the Tories became unelectable for that reason.

At least poor old Gordon did do something different. Unfortunately, only after all the money had dried up. Too careful for too long when there was lots of money, followed by a period of greater public extravagance, followed by possibly reckless spending, followed by savage cuts? To change or not to change? To be radical in a time of fear or simply to spend an awful lot less and make everyone feel miserable?

Maybe I could invent a time machine. Where is Doctor Who when we need him?

Hey, Rabbit! You've started thinking in soundbites! Could be the start of a winter epidemic.

I was just thinking that Rabbit must be enjoying a drink or maybe she liked talking to herself!

Actually I quite liked Gordon, at least he wasn't all show and smiling for the camera.

I was about to ask whether I was the only person who liked Gordon Brown. I felt he actually had principles and felt acutely uncomfortable at having been made to break them all those years under Tony Blair. Why was he expected to come across well on camera? What does that matter? And as for his temper - I'm quite certain there have been other frustrated leaders who have lost their tempers before. Better that than a smarmy veneer, even if difficult to work for.

(I voted for him...).

I think Gordon Brown had to forego a lot of his principles and I think ultimately that was his undoing personally and politically.

He was surrounded by Blairites and New Labour thinkers. Right man, wrong time.